The South Texas College of Law Courtroom Complex
Courtroom skills have traditionally been a major focus at South Texas, and the College has fielded an unparalleled number of top national advocacy teams–81 as of Fall 2002. In addition our student-run Board of Advocates usually sponsors at least five intramural advocacy competitions, with over 600 participants, during the academic year. These competitions, which include both mock trials and moot courts, bring hundreds of area practitioners and judges into the school throughout the year.
To support our Advocacy Program, as well as other schoolwide activities, the College is embarking on a new construction project–a $3 million courtroom complex to be built within our Cullen Building. Detailed below are the components of the complex: the T. Gerald Treece Courtroom, to be named for the Advocacy Program’s longtime director; the Advocacy Hall of Champions; and the Advocacy Center.
The T. Gerald Treece Courtroom and Advocacy Hall of Champions
Encompassing two stories of space, the T. Gerald Treece Courtroom will combine the architecture of the traditional courtroom with state-of-the art technological features, most of which will be hidden from view to maintain the decorum of the court. The Treece Courtroom will be used for five major purposes:
- to support practice sessions for South Texas advocacy teams;
- to host advocacy competitions and conduct competition award ceremonies;
- to enhance the teaching of civil and criminal trial advocacy courses;
- to serve as a schoolwide ceremonial space; and
- to serve as an educational facility for studying the legal process.
Visitors will enter the courtroom through an elegant lobby space, to be known as the Advocacy Hall of Champions. Featuring limestone floors accented with black marble; artistic displays honoring donors to the South Texas Courtroom Campaign, which is funding the project; and the names of national-championship winners displayed on the walls, the Hall of Champions will serve as a unique reception area for special College events.
Court proceedings will be conducted on the first floor of the courtroom, which will house the judges’ bench (a modular unit that will expand to accommodate up to nine judges at a time), the witness stand, the court clerk’s table, the court reporter’s table, the attorneys’ tables, the bailiff’s desk, the jury box, a press box, and a spectator area (to be located adjacent to the front entrance of the facility). The second floor of the courtroom will contain two conference rooms, plus a control room for operating the facility’s multimedia equipment. This equipment will include video cameras and monitors, a document camera, videocassette and DVD players, an electronic podium, PC connection boxes, a real-time court-reporting system, audio- and videorecording equipment, and an audio and video mixing and switching system.
Cable and wiring to connect these technological features will be hidden below the courtroom's floor, behind its walls, and above its ceiling. Removable panels built into each of these structural components will allow access to the cable and wiring. The courtroom will also feature a noise-resistant floor covering, and wall and ceiling treatments, to make it acoustically sound.
Adjoining the courtroom on the first floor will be two additional rooms, plus restroom facilities. One room, located behind the judge's bench, will be a multipurpose facility, which will be used mainly as a dressing/setup room for ceremonial functions and as a robing room for judges; on rare occasions it will also be used as a jury deliberation room. The other room, which will be situated along a side wall of the courtroom, will be a storage room used to house portable furniture and multimedia equipment.
With its unique design and abundance of easily operable technological features, plus an infrastructure that will be adaptable to the incorporation of new technologies, the T. Gerald Treece Courtroom–the keystone of our project–will be the state’s definitive teaching courtroom for the twenty-first century. As such, it will reflect South Texas College of Law’s ongoing role as a center for legal education.
The Advocacy Center
The command post from which the entire Advocacy Program will be run, the Advocacy Center will house the offices of Associate Dean Treece (referred to affectionately by his students as “Coach”) and his assistant, as well as a meeting room. Within these offices, Coach Treece will organize the South Texas teams that will compete in future advocacy tournaments throughout the United States, and map out the detailed strategies these teams will employ in their competitions.
The College’s intramural competitions are organized and run by its Board of Advocates, a student group with fourteen to eighteen officers and directors who are elected each year. The Board of Advocates will conduct their activities in the meeting room, a spacious facility that will be designed with a special feature: built-in glass trophy cases, extending around the entire perimeter of the room, that will display the College’s national advocacy awards.
Our intramural competitions are judged by hundreds of Houston-area lawyers and judges–both alumni and nonalumni–each year. During the visits of these intramural jurists to the College, the meeting room will serve another function: as a space for them to both read students’ briefs before they are presented in court, and obtain other details about the cases they will be judging. In addition, with the awards display as its most prominent feature, the room will serve as a symbol to these visitors of the vital role our Advocacy Program plays in providing the Houston community with future attorneys skilled in the art of trying and appealing a case.
The goal of the Courtroom Campaign is to raise the $3 million necessary to fund the construction of the South Texas College of Law courtroom complex. All donors to the Courtroom Campaign will be honored by having their names appear on an artistic wall display within the Hall of Champions.
CLICK ON EACH COURTHOUSE TO VIEW A LARGER PHOTO
Each donor making a gift of at least $5,000 will be specially recognized by having his or her name installed beneath one of Geoff Winningham’s striking photographs of Texas courthouses, to be displayed throughout the new complex.
In addition, the following naming opportunities are available for gifts of $25,000 to $1 million
- Advocacy Center ($1 million)
- Alumni Reception Area ($250,000)
- Large Conference Room ($150,000)
- Small Conference Rooms ($50,000 each)
- Board of Advocates Office/Workroom ($50,000)
- Coach’s Office ($50,000)
- Mediation/Interview Rooms ($25,000-$50,000 each)
How
to Participate
To make your contribution to the Courtroom Campaign, please send your check or pledge in the attached envelope to:
Office of Development
South Texas College of Law
1303 San Jacinto, Suite 240
Houston, Texas 77002
Tax-deductible contributions to the Courtroom Campaign must be made by August 31, 2003, for names to appear on the donor wall. Pledges are payable over three years. For more information about the campaign, please contact Kim Parker, Vice President for Development, at (713) 646-1803.
